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I'm looking for a <$5k camera to shoot documentary-style video. In late August, I was part of a a week-long intensive program shooting interviews and concert footage, using one of these and I really liked the feel of it (boom mic wired into camera as well, though we shot in SD and to tape). It was my first time using something above the handheld home videos style camera. I believe my school may rent out film equipment but I need to check on that. In the meantime, I'm looking into purchasing my own. Although that HV30 mentioned above looking interesting as well. I'm not in film school so I don't need/want to make a huge investment.
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Sep 29, 2009 18:00
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I tried signing out cameras from the school. It sucked. They found the need to put a sony handycam into a 10 pound pelican case and use 15 pound tripods for them. Combine that with my dorm being 1/2 mile downhill from the art building and having to turn it back in 2 days later, it gets real old real fast not having your own equipment or editing station. Kitsch, you can get a Canon XH-A1 for $3,400. It's a pretty good camera and what I use now.
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Sep 29, 2009 18:16
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Kitsch Ersatz posted:though we shot in SD and to tape If you liked an HVX 200 while shooting like that, then you'll love it if you use it as intended with P2 cards.
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Sep 29, 2009 21:46
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God bless university equipment loan services, went in to hire a camera for a short project and left with this on a 2 week loan: Can someone educate me on 25P. I understand the basic concept, and prefer how it looks. Using FCP and exporting for quicktime playback (will be using anamorphic) are there any limitations/issues I should know about?
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Oct 1, 2009 20:53
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do you mean 24p? If you are using P2 cards you should set it to 24PN instead of 24P (selectable with the resolution in the menu, I recommend 720p/24PN). I might be inaccurate on the specifics but basically 24P shoots 60fps and does a pulldown to average the frames into 24fps. It's meant for DV tape since DV can only do 60fps. On P2 cards it's all digital so if you set it to 24PN it natively only records 24 full frames per second and doesn't average them to fit 60fps at all. It looks better and also saves space on the card since it's shooting less frames. There are no drawbacks. DEATH TO TAPE!
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Oct 1, 2009 21:28
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Yeah I guess I mean 24p, I assumed it was 25P as that's what Scene F5 shows on the display. No P2 cards just DV, guess I just need to go out and experiment. Annoyingly I only have a miniDV to FW400, not 800, so can't do anything on my MBP this evening.
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Oct 1, 2009 21:43
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I would go with the 720p/24p mode in that case.
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Oct 1, 2009 22:02
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blambert posted:Yeah I guess I mean 24p, I assumed it was 25P as that's what Scene F5 shows on the display. No P2 cards just DV, guess I just need to go out and experiment. Annoyingly I only have a miniDV to FW400, not 800, so can't do anything on my MBP this evening. So, you're not in Europe? You want 24. Is that an HVX-200 or a DVX-100? Either way if you shooting to tape you're shooting DV 480i. You can shoot 24 but you need to make sure you capture with the right preset in FCP. I don't recall exactly what it's titled but it is DV, 16:9 and 24fps. It might even say something about Panasonic or the DVX-100 on it, it has to remove a pull down for the footage to be useable.
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Oct 1, 2009 22:32
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I'm in the UK, so PAL, and getting confused haha. DVX-100b. So 25p and 24p both exist and are region specific? I'll put it onto the 25P scene setting, film some stuff, and play around with FCP tomorrow and see what happens, probably the easiest way to learn.
blambert fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Oct 2, 2009 |
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Oct 1, 2009 23:21
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Didn't know you were UK, and it looked like an HVX, so I'm off. 25P for PAL(Europe) and your camera doesn't do HD. Sorry to confuse you. ButteryPancakes are you saying that HVX DV tape can't record HD? Because it can.
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Oct 2, 2009 01:48
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SquareDog posted:ButteryPancakes are you saying that HVX DV tape can't record HD? Because it can. The HVX-200 can only do DV to tape, not even DVCPRO50. It's bigger brothers, like the HPX-500, can do DVCPROHD to tape.
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Oct 2, 2009 03:19
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HPX-500 can do pretty much any flavour of SD or HD but it can only do it to P2 card. No tape in the 500. That's why it is so awesome.
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Oct 2, 2009 04:57
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butterypancakes posted:The HVX-200 can only do DV to tape, not even DVCPRO50. It's bigger brothers, like the HPX-500, can do DVCPROHD to tape. Well I suppose I've never even USED tape on an HVX outside of intentionally shooting SD (for legal video). But I've used DV tapes in HD on far lesser cameras so I assumed the HVX could too. It can't really? are you sure?
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Oct 2, 2009 05:03
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SquareDog posted:Well I suppose I've never even USED tape on an HVX outside of intentionally shooting SD (for legal video). But I've used DV tapes in HD on far lesser cameras so I assumed the HVX could too. It can't really? are you sure? I'm 100% sure. All though I was just confused as to which camera the 500 was. Other smaller tape based HD cameras are HDV not DVCPROHD and only use about 1/3 of the bandwidth so recording onto a miniDV tape gives you a more acceptable capacity.
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Oct 2, 2009 05:29
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lol good to know, even though pray to God I never have to shoot on tape ever again.
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Oct 2, 2009 11:43
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So we finally got some funding for our movie, and we'll be spending a bit more on the equipment this time. We'll likely be shooting on the EX-3 again this time, but I was wondering about options for lenses. One of the updates for the EX-3 over the EX-1 was the interchangeable lens, but after searching around, I'm not finding that many lenses or even adapters for this. I did find that Letus makes an adapter that lets you bypass the lens and use regular 35mm glass on it, but it costs $3500, which is way more than I'm willing to spend on an adapter for a rented camera. Is the interchangeable lens thing on the EX-3 not really worth it at the price point I'm looking at? Is it better just to save a bit of money and go for the EX-1 instead? I have a shoulder mount for my DVX100 so the shoulder mount thing on the EX-3 isn't really an advantage. Also, I'm much more comfortable using the DVX100 over the EX-3, so should I consider using the HVX-200A instead?
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Oct 2, 2009 16:22
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can you guys talk about what the director and cinematographer relationship/interaction is like? do you guys ever shoot stills for lighting tests?
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Oct 2, 2009 17:34
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Momonari kun posted:So we finally got some funding for our movie, and we'll be spending a bit more on the equipment this time. We'll likely be shooting on the EX-3 again this time, but I was wondering about options for lenses. One of the updates for the EX-3 over the EX-1 was the interchangeable lens, but after searching around, I'm not finding that many lenses or even adapters for this. I going to try to chime in again without confusing myself. You don't need to buy the $3,500 relay to use an adapter. It would be ideal but it is not necessary. You can put a regular $1,000 Letus in the end of the lens that's already on it, you just lose a half a stop. Also depending on where you live you can rent an adapter. I recommend the Letus over the Brevis and the Red Rock. Also I would would recommend to not use an adapter unless you really want the look that it gives, it can be gimmicky in the wrong situations. Question for you, have to tested the workflow for their SxS cards? I heard in the past that they're very proprietary and only work in Vegas or some poo poo even though they're .MXF it's like a special Sony .MXF. SquareDog fucked around with this message at 22:07 on Oct 2, 2009 |
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Oct 2, 2009 20:10
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AIIAZNSK8ER posted:can you guys talk about what the director and cinematographer relationship/interaction is like? do you guys ever shoot stills for lighting tests? I turned down a weird AC/Photoshop position w/ the cinematographer that did Devil's Rejects. Apparently he not only does stills, but tries out a lot of his color correction ideas on an on-set laptop, which I thought was a cool idea. (I turned it down because they told me no pay after they interviewed me and offered me the job... not even a PA day-rate? gently caress off) Personally, I never shoot stills, but I don't do a lot of heavily-stylized work.
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Oct 2, 2009 20:39
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SquareDog posted:Question for you, have to tested the workflow for their SxS cards? I heard in the past that they're very proprietary and only work in Vegas for some poo poo even though they're .MXF it's like a special Sony .MXF. I've edited it with FCP using a USB reader. Also, Momonari kun, if you have experience with a DVX100 and it's adapters why not just use an HVX? butterypancakes fucked around with this message at 20:53 on Oct 2, 2009 |
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Oct 2, 2009 20:49
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butterypancakes posted:I've edited it with FCP using a USB reader. I second this but am afraid to sound gay for Panasonic.
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Oct 2, 2009 22:08
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I just picked up a JVC GY-HM100 yesterday. This guy. I loved the dual SD card concept, and wish I could have afforded the HM700, but this is an huge upgrade from my GZ-HD7, which is basically it's little brother.  GZ-HD7 The HM100 is physically larger even without the mic handle attached.  Click here for the full 600x800 image. lovely iPhone picture. I removed the mic handle of the HM100, and lens hoods from both cameras The low light performance is so much better than the HD7, it's also got up to 18dB of gain so I can really push it in the dark if I want to. I'll get some video up once it stops raining around here. It records pretty much any HD frame rate you could want, I'm in North America and mine will record in both NTSC and PAL. I'm really loving 720/60P, being able to slow my footage down by 50% is fun. I've got 2 8GB cards in there right now, 27 minutes per card. I can set the camera up to record multiple times in one long file, as if it were a tape, or to create a new file each time the record button is pressed. Either way, the camera switches from one card to the other when one fills up, just like P2. I've got 32GB cards on order from Amazon, that's the largest is will take. If anybody has any questions about it just ask. EDIT: $4299.99. Lots and lots of money, but it will see a lot of use. bring back old gbs fucked around with this message at 23:41 on Oct 2, 2009 |
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Oct 2, 2009 22:55
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How much was it?
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Oct 2, 2009 23:08
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Haha, SxS workflow. Having a BITCH of a time getting it to work. I posted in the post production thread in SH/SC, but if butterypancakes or someone else can help me, I'd be super grateful. Long story short, I plugged in the rented EX-3 into my computer and it saw the device as a USB device so I tried playing the videos in VLC. They worked so I just copied and pasted them over (THIS IS A VERY VERY BAD IDEA). Stupidly, I didn't include the cue file or something and now Final Cut, Compressor, and Quicktime Pro cannot recognize them. I can stream the files using VLC and then convert them into QT from there, but I've been having sound issues and may have to export sound separately and then add them together in post, which will suck so much. Anyway, I don't blame the EX-3 or the workflow, just my misunderstanding of it. I didn't have a lot of time and it seemed like it would work, but it positively didn't. Flip4Mac has a codec for QT that supposedly reads .mxf files. Anybody have any experience with that? I am ready to tear my hair out with all these stupid little niggling files. I'm actually wishing I'd shot this all on my DVX instead. At least I can go back to tape with that. Anyway, back to cameras. I don't have experience with any adapters, having shot stock lens on everything I've done, but I've read a lot about them online. Renting it is kind of iffy here in Korea. There's only one place I found that rented it and a camera, and they're always out of stock. My regular rental house had never even heard of it, but maybe I'll try to get them to buy one. I've thought about going with the HVX because of how much I've used the DVX, but also wanted to max out resolution as much as possible and have as shallow depth of field as possible (if no adapter), and the 1080p mode on the EX-3 looks way sharper than the HVX footage I've seen. Edit: Or should I just say gently caress it and shoot it on a GH1? I can get one body only for like $800. No lens worries, no post production worries (except latitude on CC), and it's a new toy. Momonari kun fucked around with this message at 01:06 on Oct 3, 2009 |
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Oct 3, 2009 01:04
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Momonari kun posted:I posted in the post production thread in SH/SC I'm not sure I've ever seen that thread. You sorta screwed yourself over by not just using log and transfer in FCP. Try and export them out of VLC with the "dummy" codec it should just put the same video in a new container. Quicktime's MPEG-2 playback component should be enough to decode the resulting files. I'd then convert them to ProRes with compressor. If only MPEG Streamclip read MXF files.
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Oct 3, 2009 03:08
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The post thread in SH/SC seems neat, but I don't really want to post here, there and then still answer questions in TA/VA. Filmy Filmmakers was just ahead of it's time.
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Oct 3, 2009 03:20
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butterypancakes posted:You sorta screwed yourself over by not just using log and transfer in FCP. Try and export them out of VLC with the "dummy" codec it should just put the same video in a new container. Quicktime's MPEG-2 playback component should be enough to decode the resulting files. The only way I can get any usable output out of VLC (other than straight playback, which is flawless) is doing a transcode to high bitrate H.264. The resulting file opens up in Quicktime, and plays perfectly, but when I transcode to anything else from there, the audio always cuts out halfway through the clip. It doesn't matter if it's a 30 second clip or a two minute clip, always at the halfway point. It's a maddening problem. Edit: Just tried transcoding to .mp4 in QTPro, but even with video passthrough and re-encoded audio, it still cuts out. There's something messed up with Quicktime's audio.
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Oct 3, 2009 04:10
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Just export the video and then the audio to a wav. You can use the merge command in FCP to edit them as one clip.
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Oct 3, 2009 04:25
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I'm not much of a post guy, but on the last shoot I did AC on the EX3 (with Pro35 Adapter, the resulting images were quite nice) there was no 2nd and I had to do the file storage as well, the SxS cards fit right into the Macbook, we had a file browser/previewer and I used it to copy the clips to 3 hard drives, just drag and drop the thumbnails and it takes care of cue files, folder structure and meta data automagically. Then afterwards there was a prog to convert it from the proprietary thing to a file format of your choice. I can't remember the name, but it all was easy as cake and I think it came from the Sony website if that helps you any. EDIT: I might have misunderstood, if you don't have the cue files any more, you are screwed? No tool to rebuild them?
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Oct 4, 2009 23:22
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Frost posted:EDIT: I might have misunderstood, if you don't have the cue files any more, you are screwed? No tool to rebuild them? Each of the "clips" comes in a folder. I have the folder for each clip (it includes a .smi, .xml, and two others I can't remember, I'm at work now), but I seem to recall there being another file that lived in the parent folder. I can't remember if there was or not, and I don't have easy access to the camera to test the theory. I did try Sony's XDCAM viewer or whatever, but that also wouldn't recognize the files. In hindsight, I probably should have used that viewer to import the footage, but at this point, I can't do anything about it.
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Oct 5, 2009 01:00
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Frost posted:the SxS cards fit right into the Macbook, Any Mac less than a couple years old doesn't have that slot anymore. Sad story.
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Oct 5, 2009 04:40
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Momonari kun posted:Each of the "clips" comes in a folder. I have the folder for each clip (it includes a .smi, .xml, and two others I can't remember, I'm at work now), but I seem to recall there being another file that lived in the parent folder. I can't remember if there was or not, and I don't have easy access to the camera to test the theory. Yeah, I tried moving them with the Mac file browser at first and noticed that as well, that's when I switched to the other prog. Too bad man.
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Oct 5, 2009 19:41
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Frost posted:Yeah, I tried moving them with the Mac file browser at first and noticed that as well, that's when I switched to the other prog. Too bad man. Ugggh... not what I wanted to hear. The funding we got was partially based on having this on our reel. The director is really good at sweet talking about things he doesn't have done yet... I have a few more ideas on how to fix this mess. The video is fine, it's just the audio at this point.
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Oct 6, 2009 01:01
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Great to come home from being away and see so many posts in this thread. I was out in Hollywood for the first time ever, as a movie I helped make made it to Shriekfest. We won best screenplay and best film in the under 18 category. LA is just about as dreadful as everyone says it is.
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Oct 6, 2009 03:50
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Slim Pickens posted:
I'm a little late on this, but your biggest failure in this film is dead frames. As soon as that bike leaves the frame, cut, don't leave a single dead frame in there. It's boring, ugly and it stands out. And on a completely unrelated note, I'm a film student, I'm producing a 25 minute short, and I'm AD'ing a much smaller project, but it will be a while before I can post either one.
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Oct 6, 2009 03:59
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The Affair posted:Great to come home from being away and see so many posts in this thread. So many people say they don't like LA but I just love it. I grew up nearby so that has me biased a bit I suppose but I love all of the madness that is LA.
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Oct 6, 2009 04:20
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I have a question that you guys can probably answer. We will be shooting in a liquor store, and our director wants to use the RED, but I'm worried about not being able to create a shallow depth of field since our school doesn't have any long lenses. I think, THINK, our lens is like 30ish - 50 ish?  Click here for the full 1600x1200 image. Ideally we will want to shoot the cashier with the bottles out of focus, do you guys think this is possible, or should we just downgrade and use the school's 500? My biggest concern is that we can't get a shallow enough depth of field and the brand labels will be legible, which would exclude us from any festivals etc. Andraste fucked around with this message at 06:56 on Oct 6, 2009 |
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Oct 6, 2009 06:54
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While lens length does contribute to depth of field what really matters is aperture. How fast are your schools lenses? a lens that opens to a T3 will be enough to get you that pretty depth of field, but having lenses that go as low as T1.3 is even better. I shot several pieces with only the standard RED zoom lens which is 18 - 50mm, T3. It doesn't look as good as it did with a set of Zeiss Super Speed primes at T1.3 but it it still looked fantastic. Really if you go all out and get a RED you should go the extra mile and invest in more lenses than just a 30 - 50mm range. Are you sure the school lenses are 35mm PL mount? Do you know people who have put them on a RED, that it works? Important things to consider. When you say "use the school's 500", do you mean the HPX 500? Please clarify. You won't get nearly the same depth of field but it will still look great on an HPX 500 and will be much cheaper if you're just borrowing it from the school.
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Oct 6, 2009 08:23
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Andraste posted:I have a question that you guys can probably answer. Where are you getting the RED? Is that also the school's camera or is it coming from a rental house? Either way, I'm with Squaredog. You really should get either a good set of primes or a good zoom lens (atleast 25-85) to go with the camera. I don't really see the point of shooting with the RED if that choice limits you to one lens. If that is the case you might be better off with that 500 if it gives you more focal length choices. You won't get the DoF but you will have more choices in composition. That seems a lot more important to me. You can always turn all the bottles slightly so that the labels aren't fully visible and you should still be able to get a certain degree of DoF by shooting wide open on the longest focal length the camera gives at all times (add ND if necesary).
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Oct 6, 2009 14:40
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Thanks a ton for the responses, I'm not a camera guy at all but I'll try and answer as many of the questions as I can. It is the school's RED and I know the school is trying to get a set of primes, but there have been issues with that, so at the moment we just have whatever lens came with the camera, 18-50 sounds right. And I think it is the HPX 500, everyone at school refers to the camera's we have as the 200, 500, and RED. 200 and 500 being Panasonics I believe. I will be talking to the DP more about lightning and camera choice later, personally I don't really give a poo poo if we don't use the RED. But the school has a couple, and they are only available to my class so we might as well use them.
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Oct 6, 2009 22:49
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